Construction marketing is your best course of action to compete in a construction industry environment that is frequently changing. High levels of competition, ever increasing costs and fluctuating demand are just some of the issues business’ in construction have to contend with. There is constant emphasis on sustaining relationships and creating new opportunities with clients in order to survive and thrive.
Construction Marketers need to pull together an effective marketing strategy to enable the business to achieve its goals in the built environment. Here, I have constructed 50 essential construction marketing tips, ideas and tactics that will enable you to deliver an effective construction marketing strategy that will get your construction business out there.
50 Essential Construction Marketing Tips, Ideas and Tactics
1. Put together a construction marketing budget plan for the financial year
In the fast paced construction sector it’s easy to have a knee jerk reaction to marketing expenditure.Let’s spend £1,000 on Google Adwords, £500 on social, or £1500 pounds on some promotional pens. All of this seems very exciting and a guaranteed way to gain interest and get new clients, but before long money has dried up with no new client to show for it. Before spending a penny put together a construction marketing plan in a spreadsheet or Google docs where it can easily be shared amongst the team. Build the marketing plan based on what the business has learnt from previous years, from new research, or specific marketing campaign needs. The purpose is to create a picture of how the years marketing activities will play out in terms of construction events you will be attending, projects and products you will need to promote and how.All with the view to create a clear understanding of the costs associated.
The initial framework provides an instant indication of whether the construction marketing aspirations are achievable within the budget, enabling adjustments to be made before financial resources runs out.
It is always useful to have an ad-hoc allowance to cater for the unknown or an unmissable opportunity.
2. Construction marketing style guide
When approaching any marketing activities construction business’ need to consult or create a style guide before they even start. You can have the most amazing project to share, or news to release but a style guide slip can have highly damaging effects on credibility. Customers will notice if you have used different fonts, spacing or colours across the messages you deliver. Consistency is key and ensures that the marketing campaign can have maximum impact.
3. A Website at the hub of your construction marketing efforts
Business’ working in the construction industry should see their website as the cornerstone of their marketing activity.It’s the first place where potential clients and customers will go to learn about your business, either via Google or directly to your website. Your website needs to be the hub of your marketing communications, rich with valuable content that will build confidence in the business. Starting with a brochure an advert or a social media channel is wasted time and money as no matter what those marketing activities can tell people, they will judge there credibility based on what your website provides. By starting with your construction business website you can better serve all of your other marketing activities. You can easily promote content via social media, email campaigns, and host video from it and you can provide a clear reference point to it on all of your printed promotions and materials such as business cards, flyers and brochures.
Your website is the face of your construction business make sure you make the right impression.
4. Use WordPress to build your construction website
My preference for building websites is WordPress, the platform does require some knowledge but features a wealth of free tools that make it possible to build websites that look incredible without the cost of getting designers and programmers involved. Purchase a wordpress theme from themeforest or use one of the free templates and customise it to make it fit your construction business’ style guide.Add easy to manage SEO automation (Yoast), social sharing (Publicize), build email newsletters and databases quickly (mailpoet/mailchimp) and easily include youtube content and external source content by pasting a link, the list of benefits are endless. If you would prefer to adopt drag and drop approach to your construction business website WiX is a good alternative, just watch out for the added costs associated with the extra features.
5. Specific construction promotions
Build your marketing promotions around a specific message, such a single case study, product or service. As with any business it’s tempting to want to tell your audience everything your construction business does, there are so many benefits and features you may want to blanket your clients with an all encompassing message. More often than not your audience will get overwhelmed, switch off and take no action, resulting in a missed opportunity. By remaining specific and focusing on one area of your business you are much more capable of delivering a clear concise message. Clarity is essential in marketing environments where audiences have little time to consume and digest your message. Be specific, clear and consistent.
6. Testimonials/Reviews
Including testimonials and reviews from customers and project partners is a great way to build credibility with potential customers. New visitors to your website will actively seek out testimonials and are likely to consult them before making any communication with you directly. Ensure the most high profile testimonials appear on your homepage for maximum visibility and there is an additional page of reviews from different types of customers for your viewers to read.
7. Press Releases
A Press releases is a great way to achieve maximum exposure for your latest news, events and product releases. As a Construction Marketer you may choose to write the press release yourself or hire a professionally written release from a PR agency. A professional agency will deliver your business message in a style and format that is more likely to be approved and published by relevant publications. They will also distribute your messages to the viewers of media outlets that you may not be able to reach via your own email database or social media following.
This ensures that your message travels fast and efficiently for maximum impact.
If you choose to write your press release in house a news distribution website such as Cision PR Newswire provides a direct channel to getting your news to relevant publications and news channels.
8. Find your niche
The construction industry is highly competitive, and by identifying a niche for your business that you can promote as a unique selling point is an excellent approach to raising awareness and creating new business. Starting out it may be tempting to promote you do everything to broaden your appeal to as many customers as possible, however being seen as a specialist in a specific area is likely to be received more positively. It is better to be seen as being outstanding at one thing than pretty good at everything. Creating this perception through focusing on a niche empowers you to offer a premium for your service and provides an in-road into other services you may be able to help them with. It is recommended that identifying a niche occurs when a business is first established, if this isn’t the case Construction Marketers should make an effort to identify and communicate niche benefits to efficiently target customers that require those services specifically.
9. Create user friendly technical brochures
As a business working in the built environment it is important to achieve a balance between technical information and user experience (UX) when designing technical brochures. Such is the depth of technical information that it often dominates a document, at the expense of user readability. In the alternative circumstance key technical features are forgotten to give a cleaner more appealing user experience. The second option is likely to have a more positive first impression on readers, but leave them needing to consult other sources for technical detail. An overly technical guide may switch potential clients off immediately. Creating the right balance between images, text and white space is advisable, if your business doesn’t have these construction marketing skills in-house they may seek the support of a creative design expert.
10. Blog – write exclusive niche construction industry content
It’s important to provide valuable insight about your construction business niche via an on-site blog to attract search engine traffic. The content should be designed to be educational and informative about a specific service you offer, without the audience perceiving it as a sales pitch. Each post should focus on and be optimised for a specific key word or phrase related to your business. Using a keyword analysis tool such as Keywords Everywhere it is easy to find keywords specific to your construction industry niche for you to base your blog on. The convenience of this keyword tool is that the construction marketer can search for a generic key term for their service and identify a wealth of other similar terms that people are also searching for frequently.
This process takes a lot of the guess work out of keyword identification, leading to more efficient content creation.
If indexed properly on Google Search Console and shared via social media channels, construction business’ can enhance the opportunity for their business to be found for specific terms in search increasing traffic and the potential for new business.
11. Think outside of the box
Be creative with your construction marketing approach. Magazines, websites and social media feeds are dominated by companies adopting similar marketing and advertising tactics. These marketing channels are crying out for new and exciting marketing campaigns that give your audience incentive to read more about your business. The importance of thinking outside of the box is even more important in todays highly competitive digital marketing environment as construction marketers compete for space and time amongst brands, celebrities and sports that are considerably more attractive than typical construction posts. Take a look at my post on how to get the most from a a single press release or news story with some clever creative tricks here.
12. Be Creative with construction strap lines for blogs and content
Press releases titles are perfect for delivering news from a business perspective, but may not be the best way to communicate with an audience. An eye catching title represents a great way to create new interest and platforms like social media enable you to try a different range of approaches and test which is most effective. It is important that the new title still relates to the the content behind it and the approach is not out of character for your brands voice. A more creative approach can help to drive additional traffic to a website and increase the lifespan of an ageing piece of content.
13. Establish who your customers are
Understanding who your customers are allows you to better serve their individual needs.Failure to do so will result in even the best content failing to have the required impact. In construction there are many different demographics to consider from installer to architect, to house-builder and specifier. By first identifying their needs, construction marketers can determine the best places to communicate marketing messages, research the most effective approaches and ultimately build marketing strategies that provide a greater return in terms of response and return on investment.
14. Brand your construction business team on twitter
To give your construction business greater visibility on twitter, allow staff to create twitter profiles that incorporate your brand within them. Use a business specific image as their Twitter header, encourage them to share content from their own site visits, events, and re-share content from the main website with the view to extend and establish awareness for your business. To prevent your business credibility being at risk lay down specific rules of use, but allow for creative freedom to prevent them from feeling like they are being micro managed in how they interact on social media.
15. Pay Per Click PPC campaigns
PPC campaigns enable business’ working in the construction industry to skip to the front in search engines such google, yahoo and bing. As a consequence these methods of advertising are highly competitive and require significant financial investment, and a clear strategy to support them. Construction marketers need to mark out clear goals for their campaigns, building them based on specific product and service areas, geographical areas and business needs to make best use of the budget available. Failure to do so will lead to budgets being expended quickly with only clicks and no clients to show for it. The following example shows that there is a significant amount of work involved here for construction marketers, but a well structured PPC campaign can provide a very useful shortcut to new clients and business opportunities, previously inaccessible to your construction business:
Identify a product or service your construction business wants to gain new clients for and design a campaign specifically for that purpose. As an example your business may sell an eco-friendly alternative to beam and block floors. Therefore you may consider a campaign that focuses on capturing customers that are looking for beam and block floors, within a specific geographical area.
Identify and optimise the website landing page your customers will visit as a result of clicking the advert, ensuring that it will meet the needs of the audience and provides an obvious means to make contact or purchase directly from it (call to action)
Return to the PPC campaign and create adverts that will attract people searching specific keywords related to beam and block.
Use a tool such as keywords everywhere or Google Adwords in built keywords tool to identify the most used search terms and input them as trigger points for when potential clients are searching in Google.
Your adverts will be visible in the search and placed based on the quality score given by the search engine. Quality score is a measure of the webpage content in relation to the search, the advert written, and the value of the bid.
16. Run segmented email construction marketing campaigns
Segmented marketing campaigns target a specific section of your email database. They are ideal for marketing promotions targeted at a specific demographic, such as architects, house builders or ground workers. By understanding the demands of a specific group of customers you can create email campaigns that are more efficient, increasing views, click through rates and customer enquiries. Entire database campaigns may be more suitable for industry wide construction news or product releases, but with segmented campaigns you can adjust content precisely so it gets the response levels you deserve.
17. Build social media following through email
I am a big supporter of creating social media campaigns to build up your email contacts but your email database can also be effective in growing your social media following. Here’s how it works:
When promoting a specific piece of new content via your construction marketing emails use a link that directs the audience to your social media.
Ensure the social media link you provide features the content you want them to find.
When your audience arrives they may be logged in to that account on their phone or computer (twitter may be a better choice as its more widely accepted for use at work) and they may do the following in addition to clicking through to your content: Re-share/like the content with their followers, or start following your account.
This process could provide greater social media visibility for your business and more followers for you to deliver your messages to.
It also highlights individuals that are most supportive of your work, which may provide opportunities to strengthen relationships.
18. Events and Exhibitions
Construction events and exhibitions are a perfect construction marketing activity to get your business in front of new clients. The costs are high to exhibit, but a few conversations with architects, house builders and self builders can lead to a huge number of new enquiries.
This type of personal interaction is often impossible over the phone or via email and their attendance indicates they are there to identify new business opportunities for themselves. Ecobuild and UK Construction Week represent some of the most popular events in the construction industry calendar.
If these types of construction events are too expensive for your construction marketing budget, smaller localised events are a great option enabling you to focus your work on a specific region.
This approach may be more suitable for a construction business in its infancy, giving your business an opportunity to achieve maximum impact.
19. Construction project progress and result photos
The final build photos of your construction projects look great, but supporting progress photos add a genuine story to your construction marketing efforts. Showing the development stages and your specific involvement makes your services appear more credible to new customers, and gives a clear indication of the standard of work that is being delivered. Encourage site workers to take photos frequently and demand the highest quality pictures befitting to how you want your construction business to be perceived.
20. Build business relationships with Linkedin
Linkedin is a fantastic marketing tool for establishing and building relationships with potential new clients. Acting as a library of contacts its easy to search through linkedin and find the business’ you want to work with. Once connected keep your personal feed continuously filled with your best case studies, on site activities, and latest company news to act as continuous reminder of the services you can offer them. Share valuable information aside from your own news, and don’t hesitate to endorse or comment on their activities to further raise your profile with them. Over time their awareness of your construction business will grow, leaving you well placed to make more direct contact via the inbuilt mailing system (inmail). Make sure you build a company page for your construction business, and promote it in order to encourage people to follow your work and build even greater credibility.
21. Seek free editorial opportunities – in magazines and websites
Construction magazines and websites are always looking for the latest news and stories to promote on their websites. In many cases they will offer web posts for free as it’s a great way for them to drive new traffic to their website and the perfect way for you to build valuable web links back into your construction business website. Relevant back links are an essential part of search engine optimisation a key feature of effective digital marketing. Ensure the website providing a link is suitable for your business for maximum search engine optimisation potential.
22. Getting the branding right
Branding embodies everything your business is about and represents a promise to your customer. Branding represents how a construction business differentiates itself from the competition, your position in the market, the value of your product. You can find out more about branding specifically here. Your construction business logo is a key component of how your brand is specified and you can find out more about the type of process that often goes into creating a logo with branding and profile in mind.
23. Adopt a personal email approach
A personalised email approach to your construction marketing efforts, can make all the difference as to whether they open, read and engage with your email. Your potential and existing clients are more than familiar with receiving spam and sales messages, so don’t give them an opportunity to classify your emails in that category. An impersonal approach could lead to them switching off completely to your emails, dismantling the relationship you have gone to great lengths to build over time. Construction marketers may adopt a personal approach by keeping emails in plain text and ensuring the majority of emails are highly relevant to the client with only a few discussing new business opportunities.
24. Recycle your best content with social media
Social media is great way to create a continuous flow of traffic into your construction website or towards a specific piece of content, weeks and months after it has been published. It’s a great construction marketing method for improving your visibility to new clients or reminding existing ones. I’ve previously written a great guide on how you can get more life out of your latest news, products and services using #hashtags, @handles, leverage and tagging here.
25. Social Media Automation
Automation is highly effective approach for business’ in the built environment to deliver sustained, balanced social media marketing campaigns without risking the business’ day to day requirements. Automation via tools such as Buffer, Dlvr.it and Hootsuite gives construction marketers the opportunity to share content immediately or schedule it multiple times in the future across all of their business’ marketing platforms. Work that would normally take up multiple hours throughout the week and would interrupt your regular schedule can be completed in a few hours in a single day, giving you one less thing to think about. Learn more about social media automation here.
26. Set up social media with a view to capture more emails
Emails provide an opportunity to have a more personal and direct conversation with potential clients than is possible via social media. Construction marketers will know that social media environments are bulging with entertainment, celebrity and sports activities all trying to grab the audience attention. Therefore it is important construction business’ aim to gather email contacts through their social media activities. Offer an attractive incentive as soon as the visitor lands on your page from social media to increase the chances of email capture. Here’s an article i previously wrote on the subject of email having greater importance than social media followers with response rate, personalisation, mindshare and relationship building representing four of the twelve discussion points.
27. Turn images into more engaging video
Using existing images to create engaging video is a really useful way to further utilise your best content. Tools like imovie for mac make it simple to pull together photos, simple transitions and music to create a fresh piece of content for your website or social media feeds. Other paid tools such as motion array also enables business’ in the built environment to give a more professional look to their content without massive expenditure. For more image related tools for creating great social media and website content read my recent post.
28. Drone Video Footage
Construction marketers can use drone footage to create a truly cinematic and compelling experience for their audiences. It’s a great way to to welcome your audience on your website, has incredible share-ability potential on social media and is a piece of construction marketing content you can continue to benefit from for multiple years. Ideal for showcasing projects, the factory line, premises or team it can really help to enhance the professional perception and personality for your business. Here’s a captivating example of a drone video footage being used on a construction site
29. Engage in Celebrity/influencer marketing
Using a local or nationwide (depending on budget) celebrity to endorse your construction business is a potential way to enhance the credibility of your business locally or across the country. It will help your business to stand out from the crowd and is well suited to social media environments where audiences demand a little more than generic construction posts. Another effective approach is to utilise your workforce and colleagues to act as influential figures by sharing content endorsing your business on their own social media channels. Alternatively and perhaps most effectively identify existing youtube users specialising in construction and incentivise them to endorse or use your products/services in their videos being posted to their captive audience. Read more about influencer marketing here.
30. Provide a weekly email newsletter to keep in the mindset of your audience
If construction business’ have valuable news to share it is important to utilise it via all platforms available.A weekly email newsletter covering your business’ activity, will have considerably higher engagement than through social media making it a prime place to communicate what your business has been up to you. If possible segment your email database and tweak the content to create a more personal experience and further enhance the potential for your readers to read and engage via website clicks and replies. Identify the best time and type of content to send emails to maximise response rates and your construction business will slowly receive the benefits of being a familiar addition to your contacts email inbox.
31. Turn video into GIFs
GIFs are a fun way to show installation, product and project video into small snippets of content to be utilised via social media. They are really good way for construction business’ to catch the eye in busy social media environments as they don’t need to be clicked to start, won’t eat up people’s data allowance and are shown on a continuous loop enabling your visual message to be shown over and over again without disturbance. ezgif represents a great GIF generating tool, you can read more on the benefits of GIFs in social media here.
32. Direct Mail – Traditional Construction Marketing Tools
With construction business’ vying for attention in the digital world, what better time for construction marketers to go back to the traditional route and adopt a direct marketing approach. A well tailored written letter of introduction, may prove considerably more effective than a continuous barrage of emails, social media messages and un-expected phone calls. A direct mail could give your ideal client the opportunity to step away from the desk and fully digest your message ultimately leading to future enquiries or a warmer response to any further contact you make online.
33. Tell a Story
By telling a story about your construction business you can build a personality for your business and engage more with your audience. It’s the perfect way to approach describing a new product or recent project, construction marketers could detail the process of how the product came to be invented or the stages of how a project was completed. This approach can be significantly more effective as the first phase of educating potential customers who may be overwhelmed by technical specifications. By placing your customer as the hero in your business or product related stories, you can also significantly enhance the performance of marketing campaigns.
34. Viral How to Content
Representing the second most popular search engine, Youtube is a great place to try to capture new customers. How to DIY content is always extremely popular as people seek knowledge on how to solve problems and tasks themselves. If your construction industry business provides a product or service that suits a DIY demographic, marketers may consider creating a library of “how to” videos that utilise your product within them. The videos could be created in-house or youtube content creators with a strong following could be identified to use your products in their videos. By utilising an influencer the response could be greater as subscribers consider them a more credible source than the business themselves.
The content created is also valuable for use on the companies website to retain visitor attention, be utilised at events and also be used by technical teams to help advise customers more effectively on how products should be installed.
A mobile friendly website is a must in todays worlds with Google taking action back in 2016 to prioritise web sites that are mobile friendly in their search results. In addition November 2016 was the first time mobile website page views exceeded desktops in the UK. If your construction business’ website isn’t mobile friendly now, this will undoubtedly be impacting it’s appearance in search engines. Construction marketers are advised to take immediate action to enhance SEO and incoming traffic. It is also advisable as a means to sustain existing customers using mobile devices, who may turn to competitors if the mobile user experience isn’t up to standard.
36. Go live with Facebook or Twitters Periscope
Social media tools such as Facebook Live or Twitters periscope are an entertaining way for companies to engage with their audience. Construction marketers could use these in-the moment platforms to showcase profile projects, product launches or to even greater effect at construction events where they can attract the interest of people at the show or those unable to attend. Due to the popularity of twitter in the built environment periscope might seem the obvious choice, but recent statistics indicate that Facebook Live is vastly more popular than periscope amongst companies, largely due to better functionality and it’s significantly larger number of users (twitter 300 million/facebook 1 billion). If your construction industry business has a strong facebook following it may prove to be the most beneficial social media channel to adopt for your live filming requirements.
37. Create Instagram or Facebook stories
Instagram stories could prove to be a hugely effective way for construction marketers to achieve a sustainable line of communication with their audience, through sharing company related content with an engaged youthful audience that represents the future of the construction industry. Leveraging the support of colleagues, celebrities and influential figures are an effective means for construction business’ to raise its profile on a platform widely viewed as being for a different audience. Construction business’ not convinced should consider recent statistics showing that engagement with brands is 10 times higher on instagram than on Facebook, 54 times higher than Pinterest and 84 times higher than Twitter. Read my recent post on instragram stories potential benefits to construction business’.
38. Create suspense and excitement via digital marketing tools
As much as social media is a great way to recycle news in exciting new ways over extended periods of time,it is also hugely effective alongside other digital marketing tools such as email, website and offline marketing as a pre-launch marketing tool for business’ in the construction industry. Sharing teasers about what is on the horizon can be hugely beneficial in capturing consumer information from people eager to find out about a product or service as soon it’s launched, or simply increase awareness and overall engagement leading to more positive behaviours when the full announcement is made. Here’s an example of how a construction marketer might use twitter as pre-launch tool.
39. Create your own personalised hashtag suitable for business’ in the built environment
Consumer brands have gained significant social media benefits including followers and brand engagement as response to clever and witty uses of personalised hashtags. Charmin the toilet paper brand used #tweetfromtheseat as a highly effective and humorous means to create interaction and sharing on social media. Construction marketers could create a hashtag befitting their services, by balancing humour with business interests. As the Charmin example shows the best approach may be to be more generic when attempting to attract new customers via construction marketing hashtags. Communicating the hashtag through various marketing channels is a good way to provoke initial adoption.
40. Engage the younger generation via social media marketing tools
Business’ working in the construction sector could be doing more from a digital marketing perspective to engage with future generations. Typically youths are unlikely to be familiar with the majority of brands, business’ and companies involved in construction and digital marketing channels provide a hugely effective means to connect with those people in environments they are familiar with. Via the demographic tools available on social media platforms via paid advertising and carefully considered content for that audience construction business’ can sew the seeds for future generations.
It may not be an effective way to get new clients today, but a well managed campaign could pave the way for stronger relationships in the future.
41. Utilise your business logo on all external communications
In the digital marketing space business’ involved in construction are generating significantly more content than before.Every press release and web post requires an associated image, social media demands a continuous flow of images and video and every email a new set of captivating graphics. All these communications are another opportunity for construction marketers to gain visibility for the business and where the business logo should be featured. Such is the way information is communicated online (social re-sharing, google, email), new customer opportunities could occur at any time and the inclusion of a logo can provide a reference point for them to seek your business out online.
42. Follow, comment and communicate with potential clients on social media
As useful as automation tools can be in assisting business’ in their construction marketing efforts to share their own and other relevant industry news, marketers should not ignore the need to interact with followers on a more personal level. Time should be allowed to comment, share and interact “live” to build a business personality and relationships with your audience beyond a standard source of information. This could help move relationships towards more direct communications leading to business opportunities.
43. Partner/sponsor with small events
With a goal to identify new customer demographics and raise the business profile, construction business’ should identify partnership and sponsorship opportunities with related events and organisations involved in the built environment. Despite the cost, partnerships can create collaboration opportunities through all digital construction marketing channels before and after events, which can develop into new relationships during the event themselves.
44. Hire a professional photographer
Modern smartphones are capable of capturing excellent quality photos, but human error can still lead to photographs being substandard to which your business is trying to communicate to its customers. It may be necessary to contract the services of a professional photographer in order to showcase a project, your premises or a new product to the highest standards.
Considering these visuals will be communicated by an array of digital and print marketing platforms the investment may be worthwhile to ensure your business gets the exposure it deserves.
45. Identify speaking and networking opportunities
Construction and local business events provide excellent construction marketing opportunities for business’ to introduce themselves to new audiences. DCE CPD Exhibitions for example offer nationwide events that provide a local platform for construction business’s to introduce their services to new customers. They can be used to discuss how products and services meet specific legislation and building standards.
Alternatively larger events like ecobuild and uk construction week welcome thousands of visitors, with frequent speaker slots, demonstrations through their duration.
If business’ are unable to exhibit, attendance can also be beneficial as networking opportunities.
46. Recycle content through social media time and again
The pace in which social media channels such as Twitter circulate news gives companies working in the built environment a great opportunity to re-create and re-promote their best news at different times, on different days, weeks and throughout the year. Utilising @handles and tagging tools it’s easy to get partners and colleagues to re-promote time and again in an effort to reach new customers. This benefit makes social media a highly attractive construction marketing tool as there is a more welcome response to older news being posted again than there is through the majority of digital and traditional marketing avenues. Social media design tools are an efficient way to enable marketers to make existing content look fresh.
47. Don’t just share content about yourself on social media
Sharing content from other sources plays an important role in enabling social media to be an efficient construction marketing tool. Known as the 80/20 rule of social media which is adapted from the Pareto Principle.The concept emphasises the importance of 20% of your content directly promoting your brand, and the other 80% consisting of informative and educational automised social media. This balance helps retain your credibility as a useful social media account to follow, rather than appearing as an advertiser. Audiences are alert to being sold to so create the right balance to show you are there to add value to the built environment community.
48. Speed up social media content creation with free design tools
Design can be extremely time consuming and expensive in a marketing environment that demands constant flows of new content to retain relevance across all platforms. Thankfully construction marketers can utilise easy to use free online design tools to generate new content for digital and offline environments. Canva and pablo provide templates that are easy to work from and enable business’ working in the construction sector deliver great looking content that is always on-brand.
49. Consider an online chat panel
Live online chat panels are becoming more common and are even more relevant in todays instant response business environments. Once construction business’ have successfully captured a new visitor via their marketing efforts, an online chat makes communications simple and immediate. There’s no longer a need to click through to the contact page and fill out the form, or pick up the phone, visitors can have a conversation there and then. For customers to engage via the chat tool they will often need to provide their email address, which is extremely good for data capture. These marketing tools can reduce the chance that customers leave without interaction (reduced bounce rate) and if contact is made when there isn’t staff available it’s simple for visitors to leave a message and for team members of the business to follow up on the next day.
Statistics indicate that customer are 4.5 times more likely to make a purchase and far more likely to become a loyal customer of companies that feature a chat panel.
Chat panels could be the difference between a visitor choosing your construction business or a competitor due to your ability to respond immediately.
50. Don’t rely on Social. Take ownership of the relationship
On social media business’ working in the construction sector don’t have control over whether the audience they have worked to capture will migrate to a different platform or cut off social interaction altogether, (#Leavefacebook) making it unwise to hang all construction marketing efforts on the volume of social media follows. Social media will continue to be a hugely influential marketing force for the immediate future and it is important for construction business’ to continue to utilise it’s benefits. However, to create more stability for the future, communication should be made to move those relationships to email, logging them on a CRM database such as Hubspot where they can be nurtured into customers. With a business specific email contact, you possess a communication channel that remains a foundation to every other form of modern communication including social media itself.
Construction Marketing Advice
I hope these 50 construction marketing tips will help your construction business deliver more effective campaigns and support existing strategies. What are your thoughts on the advice given here and are there any additional construction marketing tips you would recommend? Please get in touch via the comment box below.
